Page:Hornung - Stingaree.djvu/199

 stood certainly in a drooping attitude at the chaplain's side, his episcopal hands behind his back. "Something happened," the glib spokesman continued with stern eyes, "something that you do not often hear of in these days. His lordship was accosted, beset, and, like the poor man in the Scriptures, despitefully entreated, not many miles beyond your own boundary, by a pair of armed ruffians!"

"Stuck up!" cried one or two, and "Bushrangers!" one or two more.

"I thank you for both words," said the chaplain, bowing. "He was stuck up by the bushranger who is once more abroad in the land. Really, Mr. Carmichael"

But the manager of Mulfera rose to his full height, and, leaning back to get the speaker into focus, stuck his arms akimbo in a way that he had in his most aggressive moments.

"And what were you doing?" he demanded fiercely of the chaplain.

"It was I who stuck him up," answered the  chaplain, whipping a single glass into his eye to meet the double ones. "My name is Stingaree!"

And in the instant's hush which followed he plucked a revolver from his breast, while the hands